OTTAWA — Point guard Elizabeth Roach made all the right reads, which allowed Lindsay Shotbolt and the rest of the Ravens to close out the books.

Roach was nothing short of spellbinding against a variety of defences and defenders as the Carleton women’s basketball Ravens blasted their archrivals, the uOttawa Gee-Gees, 57-39 in the semifinals of the Ontario University Athletics East division playoffs Saturday at the Raven’s Nest.

She repeatedly broke down the Gee-Gees off the dribble and invariably found the open shooter as the Ravens took command midway through the first half and later delivered several critical feeds to help stave off an uOttawa rally as the Ravens advanced to face the top-seeded Queen’s Gaels in the OUA East final, where they’ll be seeking their third Canadian Interuniversity Sport national tournament berth in four years.

“We just wanted to make a different impression than we did at Capital Hoops because we got our asses kicked [a 57-47 loss] in that game,” said Roach. “We made some adjustments and we worked on them all week. And we knew if we didn’t come out with full energy, it wouldn’t be pretty.”

Neither squad gave much quarter in the paint as the teams scrapped to an 11-11 tie after one quarter, collapsing their defences and making scoring as painful as dental surgery. The shooting percentages (both teams under 25%) were predictably mediocre.

McKenzie Sigurdson and Abeer Farhat notched treys to bookend a 10-0 run which also featured a pair of putback rebounds from Heather Lindsay. With the Ravens continuing to dominate the offensive boards and Roach aggressively breaking down the Gee-Gees defence off the dribble, Carleton took a 29-17 lead into the lockers.

Roach twice drove for buckets and found Shotbolt off a pick-and-roll for a layup as Carleton extended its lead to 19 early in the second half.

But the Gee-Gees shifted to a box-and-one to try to contain Roach and Stephanie MacDonald re-ignited the stagnant uOttawa offence by draining an 18-footer, pilfering the ball for a runout layup and an old-fashioned three-point play and then notching a pair of free throws. Angela Tilk and Maddie Stephen posted up for buckets in the blocks, and then MacDonald found Tilk on a beautiful inside feed as uOttawa trimmed the margin to 40-32 after three quarters.

But MacDonald picked up her fourth foul on a questionable call that looked like all ball from behind, allowing Sigurdson to notch a pair of free throws.

Yet, even that failed to completely quell the Gee-Gees momentum. MacDonald found Sarah Besselink for a transition layup and Stephen hit a pair of free throws.

But Natasha Plaskacz answered with a trey and then Roach found Shotbolt for an uncontested layup off a bounce pass. Shotbolt added a pair of treys on another questionable call, and then added a putback and as the Ravens rebuilt a 14-point lead with three minutes to play and pulled away down the stretch.

“We worked extremely hard on the boards and never game up,” said Shotbolt. “We really wanted it and we worked so our hard on our defence. We wanted a little bit of redemption from the last game we played against them.

Ravens coach Taffe Charles said his troops “fed off of Elizabeth. She just does such an awesome job of basically leading this team. And all the focus was on her and that really freed up a lot of people. They did a lot of things to try and confuse us, and we took advantage of that.”

After missing most of the week with nagging injuries, “Roach was awesome,” particularly in the first half, Charles added.

Gee-Gees coach Andy Sparks said his troops were outworked and outmuscled. “Physically, we got pushed around. We got bullied and we sort of lived with it.”

Roach led the Ravens with 17. Plaskacz added 11 and Shotbolt 10. Angela Tilk paced the Gee-Gees with 10 points and 12 boards. The Ravens hit 21-60 (. 350) from the floor, 3.15 (. 200) from the arc and 12-18 (. 667) from the line. The Gees were a dreadful 12-52 (. 231) from the floor, 2-17 (. 118) from the arc and 13-17 (. 722) from the line. Carleton outrebounded Ottawa 44-32.

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